Original Photo Album of Three Hundred and Ninety-Eight Albumen Cartes de Visite

South Queensferry, Scotland, 1860. Very Good. [South Queensferry, Scotland]: [n.d.], [ca. 1860s.] Large folio (35cm.); 20th century red cloth, original green gilt morocco spine laid down; [94]ll. to which are mounted three hundred and ninety-eight (398) original albumen photographs, all but five in carte de visite format (ca. 8.5x6.5cm.), the five exceptions consisting of the opening oval photographic portrait of John Hope, 5th Earl of Hopetoun (13.5x10.5cm.) and four uncaptioned family photographs (13x10cm.). Light shelf wear, original spine leather rather scratched and dried, textblock fore-edge shows definite evidence of use with a few leaves particularly thumbed, old tape repair to one leaf, else Very Good, photographs all in bright and fine condition.

Substantial collection of cartes de visite compiled by the Hope Family of Hopetoun House, advertised today as "Scotland's Finest Stately Home." The Hope family fortunes began in the 17th century when Sir James Hope (1614-1661) married the heiress Anne Foulis, through whom he came into the possession of valuable lead mines. With this fortune his son John (1650-1682) purchased the land on which the house would be built, though he died before the project could get underway. Instead, it was his widow Lady Margaret Hamilton who commissioned the renowned architect Sir William Bruce to build her young son a fabulous mansion, which only became more fabulous in the 18th century when William Adam and his sons expanded the structure, a task that would take forty years to complete.

The present album, whose preserved original spine reads "Photographs / Friends / F.J.H.," dates from the era of John, Sixth Earl of Hopetoun (1831-1873). The images consist of 277 original photographic portraits and 121 photographic reproductions of painted portraits. Early photographs consist almost exclusively of immediate and extended Hope family members and their many many children, nearly all neatly captioned with the name of the subject and the photographer, displaying a substantial gallery of the most renowned portraitists of the Victorian era. Notable photographers and studios include Ross and Thompson (23 images); Luigi Caldesi (25 images); André Adolphe Disderi (16 images); John Edwin Mayall (18 images), Camille Silvy (20 images); Maull & Polybank (4 images); and Antoine Claudet (3 images).

As well as Hope family members, the album also includes numerous contemporary members of the landed gentry: Lords Clyde, Canning, Elcho, Brougham, Palmerston, Russell, Eglintoun, Elgin, Derby, Cockburn, Benholm, Middleton, Shaftesbury, and Herbert; Dukes of Argyle, Athole, Buccleuch, Hamilton, and Roxburgh; and a diverse array of celebrities: Florence Nightingale, William Makepeace Thackeray, Franz Liszt, Benjamin Disraeli, Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Dickens, the actor Charles Kean, singer Giulia Grisi, mathematicians John Herschel and Hugh Blackburn, pianist Arabella Goddard, writer Catherine Sinclair, and historian Agnes Strickland. The collection also includes a suite of Mayall's photographs of Queen Victoria and her young family, the first royal cartes de visite, for which he is today best known.